Re: June 8th General Election
 

how eggsactly:naughty: did you come to that conclusion

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Just listening to the Daily Politics and Barry Gardiner (Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade) being forced to accept that by the end of the decade Labour would be borrowing twice as much as the current figure.
I wonder when Abbott will pop up claiming that doubling borrowing in this way won't increase the national debt... :D

He's also having great difficulty explaining how Labour are going to 'nationalise' the National Grid. They might do it this way, they might do it that way, not sure how much it'll cost or where the money will come from blah, blah, blah... :rofl:

He eventually admitted that some of the costs of Labour's 're-nationalisation' would come from the money we're told is going to be spent on all that supposedly new infrastructure they've promised (£25bn pa) but couldn't say how much... :rolleyes:

Labour do keep banging on about the all those obscene dividends being paid to shareholders by the likes of National Grid yet never seem to want to admit that a significant proportion of those very dividends head straight into the pension funds which so many ordinary people rely on to supplement their meagre state provision. I dare say there's a great many Labour supporters who're chomping at the bit for action to be taken on dividends yet don't realise their own pensions will suffer accordingly, just as they did when Brown raided the pension funds and took £millions away from ordinary people.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Liberal Democrats Manifesto is out, and it's there in black and white. 2nd Referendum on EU membership. Bog off you remoaning fool, Tim nice but dim.

---------- Post added at 14:31 ---------- Previous post was at 14:06 ----------

Diane Abbott. Struggles with sums and it seems now today, she has directional issues.... :rofl:

Re: June 8th General Election
 

:rofl: :D

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Blimey it's like something out of a Morecambe and Wise sketch.

:D

I must say that at first I thought she'd just walked off the stage before giving her speech. : )

Re: June 8th General Election
 

I'd have been rather amazed if Labour had got re-elected in 2010 and achieved growth by 2017!

The efforts of the Conservatives have been concentrating on getting the deficit down so that they can then start tackling the debt left by Labour. They eased up on austerity given how it was hurting, and that's why they didn't achieve their original target of abolishing the deficit by now. I trust you are not criticising them for easing up on austerity...

---------- Post added at 19:29 ---------- Previous post was at 19:20 ----------

And that's because the deficit is not yet paid off. You can't have it both ways. Either it's tougher austerity to pay off the deficit or it's lay off the austerity a bit and slow down deficit repayment. Unfortunately, the latter does mean the debt continues to rise.

I'm not sure that Diane Abbott and her friends understand this link, but then they probably haven't figured out that the debt and the deficit are two different things.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Which one of these posts is most appropriate for a reply about hard ecu's, I'm going to say Chris'

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Looks like the Tories are going to remove the universal entitlement to fuel allowance and include the value of your house in deciding if you should pay towards your social care in old age but the overall amount at which you start paying goes from 23k in assets to 100k (realistically anyone owning a home will have to pay). The cap on the overall amount you spend is being raised too.

---------- Post added at 22:23 ---------- Previous post was at 22:22 ----------

Triple-lock is gone too.

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People won't have to sell their homes. Schemes will exist where the equity is sold off to be recovered when the person dies.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...n-fund-social/
At last pensioners are going to start paying their fair share, and join in the misery with the rest of us. Well done Theresa!

The Torygraph and it's readers don't seem happy though. Austerity is meant for everyone else not them ! Don't think TM cares, doesn't need them any longer now she's got the swivel eyed loon UKippers on board.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

How many OAPs voted UKIP originally I wonder?

Re: June 8th General Election
 

I think this is good policy to be fair, even if it's politically difficult. The triple-lock was very expensive and the idea of paying for social care out of the estate upon death is a lot more progressive without having to harm people during their lives. We need to pay for social care somehow and since we're already running a deficit the only real way to spend extra money is to raise extra money.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

what house sold it for a quid to my eldest
what bank account bought a house for my youngest
mind you i paid into the system all my life and took nothing from it

Re: June 8th General Election
 

HMRC can investigate anyone whose deemed to have tried to shift their assets ahead of death/court cases/etc to avoid paying tax or penalties. I think any 'gifts' from parent to child made 5 to 10 years before the parents death can be deemed liable to tax. I imagine they can do the same here. The details of course would need to be worked out. There will now be an army of lawyers looking for such loopholes.

As for paying into the system, well a lot of us do. We still run deficits and taxation isn't a savings account. Education is expensive, healthcare is expensive, social care is expensive and pensions are very expensive. If we had a system whereby your contributions during your lifetime were the basis for your pension and social care needs in old age then a lot of people who 'paid into the systems all their lives' would be getting less, not more.

This is a fair policy in my views. It doesn't mean old people will lose their homes but it's a solution to the crisis in social care. We need to pay for social care somehow and it seems fair to me that recipients who can afford it contribute to some of the cost from their existing assets after their death.

Where else would the money came from?

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Waits for the usual cut the foreign aid budget :rolleyes:

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Usually everyone thinks the benefits others get should be cut but the entitlements they get are deserved.